Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  “You are insane!” I huff.

  “Tell me I’m wrong about this,” he dares in return.

  “Where’s the map?” I ask, throwing up my hands.

  As if in answer, the stars around us spin in a dizzying swirl of lights, fading down to darkness. Instinctively, I reach out and grab onto Dex’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” he assures me. “Don’t be afraid.” Something in his voice makes him sound older. Stronger.

  Two lights emerge from the darkness then, glowing a soft white. The two lights dance together, moving in a slow circle, always parallel to one another. The lights grow from small dots to small orbs, approaching out of the dark. I can see Dex again by their light, and my own hand still clasped upon his shoulder. Hesitantly, I let my hand drop and keep looking.

  The two spinning dots of light slow in their movement, eventually coming to a complete stand-still. Several smaller lights begin to illuminate around the twin pairing, flickering like fireflies. These dots of light float in the air, dimmer and smaller than the two original lights.

  “Here’s our map,” Dex says, stepping forward.

  I follow him, stepping through the darkness, approaching the lights. They looked a mile away a moment ago, but as I take a step I realize the entire light-show is only a few feet in front of us. Dex walks in a slow circle around the area, observing the twin lights and the smaller lights surrounding them. I can hear his pencil busily scratching his paper.

  “It’s a star-map,” Dex instructs me. “Those two lights in the middle are twin suns. The other lights would be nearby stars.”

  “So we have to get there?” I ask, pointing to the twin stars at the center of the map.

  “Presumably. Can you remember this?”

  I look back at the map, walking ahead of Dex as I continue to trace a wide circle around the twin lights. There are twelve smaller lights surrounding the center, some higher, some lower, some closer to the center, some farther away.

  “Maybe,” I answer.

  “Maybe isn’t good enough,” Dex says. “Need the paper?”

  “Give it to me.”

  Dex snorts and rips his sketch from his steno-pad.

  One by one, the outer lights begin to blink out of existence, like somebody snuffed a candle out. I’m across the map from Dex now, watching as the two center lights begin to dim. I catch a glimpse of Dex’s face in the failing light. He walks through the fading lights, hand and paper outstretched to me.

  “Dex!” I yell, rushing blindly into the dark.

  “See you around, Caleb.”

  Paper touches my fingertips and I grab the sheet, expecting to feel Dex’s hand behind it.

  But no.

  Emptiness.

  * * * * *

  “Get up now!” Mom screams. “Do something!”

  I open my eyes and find myself back in the underground complex. Lydia lies on the ground ten feet away from me, unconscious. I realize with a shock of dread that she’s missing both an arm and a leg. A pool of deep blue water is forming around her. Tori is farther away, slumped against Mr. Patel’s chest, who cradles her against him as he calls her name, over and over again. Her clothing and face are badly bloodied, and her eyes flicker open and shut, again and again in quick succession. Mixy is still passed out on the vault stage.

  The vault is gone.

  Finale, Dex, and Sola are standing at the center of the platform.

  “You destroyed it?” Finale asks Dex, her voice cold but betraying a hint of anger.

  “I destroyed nothing.” Dex answers her calmly, tapping his temple. “It’s all up here now. Call it an insurance policy. Hold up your end of the deal and I’ll come with you.”

  “You were coming with us either way,” Finale answers. “The Key is… unique. And I still have use for it. But if you fail to deliver what was promised…” She reaches a hand out, gripping Dex by the neck. “I will return here and turn this planet to ash.”

  The anger and revulsion are instantaneous. It rises up in me, seizing every bit of me, tightening every fiber of muscle in me, commanding me. I’m not thinking about Dex’s plan. Or next steps. I don’t think. I don’t even want to think. I level my guitar at Finale and sweep my guitar strings, shooting a blast of Rez that I know will fry my arms, but I don’t care. I want her to feel it. Lightning forks forward at Finale in a blur of thick, shifting energy.

  I want her dead.

  Sola’s moves in a blur, sidestepping in front of Finale at the last moment. She takes the hit full force in her chest, lightning striking with a blinding flash and crack.

  Electricity blossoms across Sola’s body, running down her hands and through her legs, sparking and flowing, erupting from her fingertips. Her body convulses violently, horribly, and she throws her head back, screaming in agony. Lightning rushes up, erupting from her mouth and finding a metal beam at the center of the focus of the dome overhead.

  Then the surge stops. For a moment, her eyes remain open, looking vacantly up as her body freezes. Then she collapses to the ground, plumes of smoke coiling from her body.

  “No!” I scream, my arms dripping blood, sagging worthlessly at my sides.

  Finale places a hand on Dex’s shoulder and the two flick out of existence.

  The complex ceiling gives a mighty, thunderous shake, and a slab of concrete three feet wide falls from overhead, crashing to the ground five feet away from Mom and me. “Caleb!” she yells at me, shaking me. “Caleb!”

  I’m numb.

  I can’t move.

  All I can do is look at Sola’s body, motionless at the center of the platform.

  “Sai!” Mom cries at Mr. Patel. “This place is coming down!”

  Vaguely, I’m aware of Mom pulling me forward, up onto the stage. Mr. Patel comes with Tori in his arms, his face tear-streaked as Tori takes gasping, grating breaths. A moment later, Mom returns with Lydia, still trailing bluish liquid behind her. It takes Mom and Mr. Patel together to drag Mixy closer to the center of the stage, where all of us are gathered, crowding around Sola’s body.

  Sola isn’t moving.

  “—er me? Repeat, c— —ou hear me?” a voice cuts in over our comms.

  “Who is this?” Mom yells, finger held to the communicator over her ear.

  “Baahir. We saw some Rez just now,” Baahir’s voice comes over the comms. “That you?”

  “We’re trapped,” Mom says, voice calmer now. “Underground. The structure is coming apart.”

  “The Composers are arriving. They put down the last destroyer. Hard. Their fault. I’m coming to get you. Just hold on.”

  Mom draws me close to her as steel and concrete continue to fall around us. The platform’s support beams seem to be keeping things together as much as possible, but I can see cracks widening above our heads. I look to Tori, reaching out and taking her hand. She gives it a slight squeeze, eyes fluttering open for a moment before slamming shut.

  The ceiling overhead shrieks as metal and concrete begin to twist from side to side. Mom gasps, sidestepping a block of concrete that crashes down beside us. But amidst the chaos around us, I hear the sound of piano notes. There’s a low rumble overhead. Churning. Grating. I close my eyes and listen to the music, focusing on it as much as I can.

  “Look!” Mom cries, and I open my eyes.

  A sliver of light pokes in from overhead, and the volume of Baahir’s piano floods into the chamber. The steel, rock, and concrete continue to shift and bend, widening as Baahir’s Rez reshapes the materials, widening a tunnel in front of his stolen Autotuner fighter. The ceiling above us stops shaking as Baahir’s ship lurches to a stop over our heads, his piano notes fading, reverberating all around us.

  A seam opens in the ship and Baahir’s head pops out a moment later. He surveys us. “You alive?” he calls down.

  “Lydia needs help, right now!” Mom calls up.

  “Help is coming!” Baahir calls back down. He crawls back into his ship and moves it sideways, allowing even more light fr
om topside to flood down over us. A moment later, I hear voices. Looking up, I see a flurry of movement as rebel fighters begin descending the newly opened shaft. They come on waves of Rez, floating down and alighting beside us.

  Helping hands pull Lydia up first, rocketing her topside.

  Tori and Mr. Patel go next. Then Mixy. Then Mom.

  A gruff-looking man with a harmonica comes to stand beside me. He sets his hand on my shoulder. “Ready to go, son?” he asks with a southern drawl.

  I look down at Sola.

  Her eyes are open.

  Looking at me.

  Empty.

  I hate her for what she did to Tori. And for a moment, I think it might be right to just leave her body down at the bottom of this pit, to be forgotten entirely until the years bury her in dust and she just fades away. As soon as I have the thought, I hate myself for thinking it. I bend down, my muscles screaming in agony, and pick Sola’s scorched body up from the ground. “I’m ready,” I tell the man, and together we head to the surface.

  We emerge into blinding daylight. The sandstorms have dissipated, no longer fueled by the destroyers’ massive engines. The remains of the Synthesizers’ ships are scattered throughout the scorching desert, hulking shells like giant black whale carcasses in an ocean of sand. Rebel ships fly by overhead.

  “Lydia’s alive,” Baahir’s voice comes over the comms. “But she needs a Composer doctor. I’m taking her now.”

  “Look!” Tori says, awake now, pointing a finger up into the clear blue sky.

  The vague shapes of warships, far larger than even the Synthesizer destroyers, are visible above us. Some are dark, much like the destroyers. Others are much lighter. Either way, it’s like finding the moon in the sky in the middle of the day; the shapes are hazier, blurred, muted. And as we watch, the vague outlines trade beams of Rez with one another. More shapes pop into the sky, flicking into space. The sky begins to light up with Rez weaponry as the spacecraft trade shots, multi-colored explosions spilling across the sky silently.

  “The Composers,” Mr. Patel breathes. “They’re here.”

  One of the large, darker ships explodes, followed quickly by another. Soon, the darker ships begin to flicker out of existence. “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “The Synthesizers are running!” Baahir exclaims over the comms. “They’re abandoning Earth!”

  All around us, the gathered rebels begin to cheer, launching celebratory bolts of Rez into the air in a raucous mixture of piping notes and rhythms.

  “They’re not running,” I say. “It’s just part of the deal.”

  Mom, Tori, and Mr. Patel each turn to me.

  “Dex is going to give them exactly what they came here for.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I was nine years old, I told my third-grade teacher that I wanted to be an astronaut. She told me that I had to become much better at math if I ever wanted to go to space. Well, Ms. Nelson: I still don’t know what the “E” in PEMDAS stands for, but right now I’m inside a spaceship orbiting the Earth 22,000 miles away from your classroom. So there.

  We’ve been aboard a Composer spaceship called the Starstruck for just over sixteen hours. It’s a three-mile long command ship that makes the Synthesizer destroyers looks small. But the shuttle that picked us up in California and brought us up to the Starstruck didn’t have much in the way of windows, and so despite my newly minted astronaut status, I haven’t actually seen much space yet. The Starstruck’s medical wing is a sterile-looking wing of pods with milky-white walls and colorful displays, much like the Carnegie’s medical room.

  Composers rush busily around while we wait.

  “Your arms look like beef jerky,” Tori says, poking me in the arm as I wince. I fried them pretty well down in the vault complex.

  “Give it a rest,” I say, flinching away. A few of the Composer doctors gave me an hour under one of their micro-surgery machines but then sent me packing, telling me to spend some quality time with my Gibson. I’m gripping it by the neck, holding it against the floor while I slouch in my chair. Baahir and Mixy are talking quietly in a nearby enclave of the medical wing’s waiting area. Mom and Mr. Patel are snoring loudly in a couple of chairs, their nasal pitches dueling in an endless call and answer.

  We’ve tuned a nearby display to a news broadcast from Earth, but it’s been the same general reporting for the last eight hours. Everyone’s confused. Everyone’s terrified. But there’s also a cautious hint of optimism. People seem to be realizing that, even though we’re definitely not alone in the universe, we might not be conquered by an armada of artificially intelligent robots. Not yet, at least.

  “She’s going to come see you now.” The Composer doctor assigned to Lydia has a voice like a hissing whisper. He/she/it slinks into the lobby, standing on six spindly, spider-like legs, carrying a Resonator that looks like an elongated harp. Tori and I stand together, Mixy rising with us. Mom and Tori’s dad don’t even break their snoring.

  “She’s already able to get out of bed?” I ask.

  “Yesssss,” the Composer doctor hisses. “Her ssspecies does not process physical trauma in the sssame way as most ssskeletal ssspecimens. She can walk. But I would… prepare yourssself for notable differencessssss.”

  We peek down the hallway to see a doorway slide open. “She asked me to inssstruct you as follows,” the Composer doctor begins. “Do not laugh.”

  A moment later, I understand why: the Lydia that steps out of the room and into the hallway isn’t the same Lydia I know. This Lydia is about three feet tall, and she’s wearing a bright pink My Little Pony t-shirt, together with elastic waistband jeans. She sees us and her skin boils with a bright pink. She trudges quickly forward, her eyes cast down at the floor.

  “Don’t!” she yells.

  Tori snorts loudly, once, clapping her hands to her mouth as though her body betrayed her.

  “Uh,” I open my mouth to speak, trying my best not to smile. “What… what happened?”

  Lydia points to one new leg, then one new arm. “I had to regrow these overnight. That takes mass and energy, okay? So I’m a little dehydrated.”

  Mixy rushes forward and scoops Lydia up in his arms, hugging her fiercely. “Music of the stars,” he says. “How I worried for you!”

  “Thanks,” she says, patting the back of Mixy’s head.

  “But you still sound so glum!” Mixy says. “I know what would cheer you up.” He tosses her up into the air a few feet as she pinwheels her arms, squawking until she comes back down into Mixy’s waiting hands. Up she goes again, then down.

  I lose it. Tori loses it.

  “Put me down! I am your Captain, Mixy. I order you! This is mutiny!”

  Mixy relents, lowering mini-Lydia back to the ground. By this point, Mom and Mr. Patel have woken up to the commotion. They stumble forward, bleary eyed and gaping at the new, miniaturized Lydia.

  “Mrs. Young,” Lydia nods curtly at Mom. “Did you bring what I asked?”

  “Yes!” Mom nods, grabbing a plastic bag from the floor nearby and handing it to Lydia. “One of Baahir’s people did a special trip just for you.”

  Lydia rifles through the bag. “Green. Yuck. Red. Agh. Oh! Blue!” She smiles, delighted, and pulls a Gatorade from the bag. We watch as she chugs the entire bottle, opens a second drink, and chugs her way through that bottle, too.

  “Ensure you spend time in contact with your Resonator,” the Composer doctor advises.

  “Thank you.” Lydia bows slightly to the Composer. She turns to look at me. “Baahir tells me you had a bit of a trip when the vault exploded.”

  “A bit,” I sigh. I’ve explained what I saw three times already: once to Tori, once to Mom and Mr. Patel, and once to Baahir, who passed Dex’s drawing off to the Composer leadership. “It’s hard to explain. Right after Dex touched the vault, it just—”

  “Hold it,” Lydia says, raising a hand. “This is going to be a proper debriefing. We’ve already heard from the admiral
ty.”

  “A proper debriefing?”

  “It means you’re going to meet a Composer admiral,” Lydia says, moving toward the exit. “We’re a bit short on time, but we should make a quick stop on the way. Do any of you get dizzy easily?” she asks as an afterthought, scanning between us. Mom raises her hand.

  “Well,” Lydia shrugs. “Sorry in advance.”

  * * * * *

  It turns out, we’ve been restricted to a very small portion of the Starstruck since we arrived. Lydia leads us into what she calls the “orchestra hall,” the main deck of the great ship. And it’s almost too much to take in.

  It’s like looking at the line between Central Park and the rest of New York City, only somebody did a copy-paste job, repeating the pattern of urban sprawl and nature reserve several times over. But then they took that pattern and wrapped it up into a tube. The Starstruck’s orchestra hall is absolutely giant, stretching at least a mile ahead of us. I look up and see dots, people moving along the ceiling. Small aircraft fly overhead on plumes of Rez, zipping between structures, dipping and turning. At the center of the expanse is a ball of bright yellow Rez. Two beams, one from over my head and one from the far end of the orchestra hall, meet the Rez bubble in the middle of the hall. It bathes the entire area in bright, natural-looking light.

  “Before we had gravity mods, we had to spin our ships,” Lydia explains, tapping at the floor with her foot. “The parks help to balance the oxygen levels,” she says. “It’d be more efficient to let machines scrub all of our air, but we Composers find that people tend to go crazy without a bit of flora around. Thus—” she waves her hand around at the park.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Mom says, looking straight down at the ground. She takes a hesitant step off the path.

  “Don’t wander too far,” Mixy grumbles. “Some of these trees are carnivorous.” He claps two of his hands at me and I yelp, a little bit louder than I’d have liked. Mom apparently reconsiders getting sick, drawing her foot back onto the path.

  We continue forward, wandering along as Lydia continues narrating our journey. Everything in the Starstruck has been carefully planned and constructed. It houses three-thousand Composers, four-hundred fighters, fifty frigates, and a full battery of onboard weapons. The numbers don’t really mean much to me. I’m too busy watching the Composers passing on the trails.